Saturday, February 18, 2017

You know something's wrong when .....

.... when your liberal friends say they appreciate the statements of this Pope

.... when the Pope seems to be more concerned with matters of the world than matters of the spirit, e.g. speeches about harming the environment and practically nothing about sexual sins and abortion

.... when stories emerge of Pope Francis' rants inside the Vatican

.... when devoted Catholics feel marginalized by this pontiff

The list goes on. Some of the latest include the Pope's language on abortion, substitution "interruption of pregnancy" for the word abortion, his statements that all religions are religions of peace when evidence abounds to show the opposite, when he said we should confess the sin of 'littering', when orthodox clergy are demoted and clergy who share the Pontiff's worldview are put in their stead.

I have provided some quotes and links below.

A few months ago, I included in my daily prayer journal a prayer for the ending of this papacy. I am not wishing for Francis' death or demise, but I am asking God to somehow intervene to stop Francis' influence on the church. Because he is causing dismay, he is creating confusion, and he is undermining the authority of the Catholic church.

...........

February 7, 2017 (Voice of the Family) – Pope Francis has marked the “day for life” in Italy by adopting the abortion lobby’s euphemism “interruption of pregnancy” in place of language that accurately describes the killing of unborn children. In his message the Holy Father does speak some welcome words, encouraging “courageous educational action in favour of human life” and reminding the gathered crowds that “every life is sacred”. Unfortunately rather than refer to abortion he adopts terminology used by the abortion industry. In fact, the form of words used by Pope Francis is specifically condemned by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae:

Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian; Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan Muslim migrant, in September 2016 set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey; Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim migrant, in September 2016 murdered five people in a mall in Burlington, Washington; Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant, in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”; and Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant, in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University. 72 jihad terrorists have come to the U.S. from the countries listed in Trump’s immigration ban.

What’s more, all of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. In February 2015, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. The Lebanese Education Minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country. On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.

In spreading this nonsense, the Pope is endangering his own people, particularly in light of the papal idolatry that is rampant in the Catholic Church today.

For human beings to “destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation,” to “degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate,” to “contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life–these are sins,” he wrote.

Among these are “avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices.”

The traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli suggested that ‘ageing or an underlying medical issue’ was responsible for his ‘persistent anger, rancour, vituperation, use of uncouth words (which is known to be increasingly frequent in private)’.

Again, this is an opponent speaking. There is no evidence that the Pope is mentally ill. However, plenty of Vatican employees will testify to his outbursts of temper, rudeness towards subordinates and vulgar language.

‘Bergoglio divides the church into those who are with him and those who are against him — and if he thinks you’re in the latter camp then he’ll come after you,’ says a priest who works in the curia.

It’s not hard to detect a Latin American flavour to the deal-making and settling of scores that has become blatant over the past year. Most Catholic bishops had thought Francis was a plain-spoken and perhaps touchingly naive reformer. Instead, they are confronted by a pope who is simultaneously combative, charming, bad-tempered, idealistic and vengeful.

Many of us feel that the direction and emphases of this current pontificate are fundamentally misguided and can be summed up in a word: worldliness. Whether this is actually the intention of the pontiff or not, it is hard to deny that there is a huge effort on part of the Vatican to search the things that are below, and not vice versa, from pandering to the leftist presses of Europe and North America to inviting those with categorically anti-Catholic agendas to give speeches and conferences at the Holy See, and on and on.

Thirdly, there is a type of uncharity, which is clearly the antithesis of the Christian life. We orthodox seminarians see this as a top-down problem. Some of the comments made by Pope Francis make many of us think that if he really knew us, he would see us not as loyal sons who have given up worldly careers and families for the sake of our vocation, but rather as instigators and troublemakers who don’t really know the Church.

This is not only tragic, but disingenuous. The pontiff who has been made infamous for saying things like “Who am I to judge?” also has made a habit of tearing into mainly hypothetical clerics who dare to wear the cassock, emphasize the importance of God’s law, or promote sacred liturgy. It gets tiresome to see your spiritual father rip you for the all the world to see when he doesn’t so much as know your name. And it gives other priests the justification to attack their more traditionally minded younger brothers, creating an environment of distrust among generations of priests. While this division is certainly not a new phenomenon, the tension has escalated dramatically since the ascension of Latin America’s first pope.

Thirdly, I thought about writing to OnePeterFive recently with all the rhetoric about “rigidity” and “rigid young Catholics.” It reminds me of a chapter from Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” and something came up which I thought would be a good article for your site. In Chapter 31 of his work, Nietzsche criticizes young people because they want ayes/no, black/answer because we (I intentionally say ‘we’) do not understand the nuances of life. One could interpret what Nietzsche says by with the simple phrase that “young people are rigid.” I highly suggest reading that 31st chapter of Nietzsche’s work because it characterizes the current overwhelming attitude of the Church’s hierarchy. Who knew that our pastors were Nietzschians? Most likely they themselves have no idea. Nietzsche himself writes that after years of experience the young man begins to doubt his enthusiasm and retreats from his youthful passion. I have seen this myself, young priests’ fire being sniffed out by the pessimism of a previous generation. Of course there is no doubt that youthful passion can be unhealthy, but when it goes to the extent that young man just accepts the status quo and never then seeks to fight for the Kingdom, then he falls into what my brother seminarian mentioned as the pursuit of worldliness; creating for himself a little kingdom of comfort where no one bothers him and he challenges no one to live up to the Gospel.